They sound like unrelated questions, but they have a common answer. Enemy attestation. Say what? English, por favor? The disciples’ enemies did not deny the claims that Jesus died on the cross or that the tomb was empty. They argued over what happened to the body.
All 4 gospels report Jesus was buried in a tomb owned by Joseph or Arimathea. Mk 15:43 refers to Joseph as a prominent Sanhedrin member. The jewish authorities, the Sanhedrin, desperately wanted to suppress this new cult of Christianity & could have easily denied those claims. After all those usurpers were taking away their followers. Worse yet revenues at the temple offerings were down. How will we meet the budget numbers for 34 A.D.? Not to mention those christians are spreading filthy lies that Jesus was the divine Messiah, the Son of God & even God with us.
Just imagine their conversation with said christians: You’ve seen somebody? Huh? Claims he’s Jesus? Back from the dead? Don’t know who that fella’ is, but Joseph of Arimathea is a bud of ours & that there tomb’s not empty. Go look fer yourself, you dumb fisherman. And before you know it there’s neon signs pointing the way, a huge line & a huckster selling tickets to see the really, really dead Jesus. The Sanhedrin couldn’t deny the empty tomb, it’s location or produce the body, so they argued about what happened to the body. The Talmud does confirm Jesus was crucified on the eve of Passover, but he is called a magician or a sorcerer for all the amazing things he did that they could not explain. The old did it with mirrors defense combined with his last trick killed him only to be faked by the disciples.
As for an impostor, if there was a twin brother or a someone that resembled Jesus on the cross, then Jesus would have been missing the wounds from the crucifixion. Doubting Thomas demands to see these same wounds before he’ll believe that the Jesus has come back from the dead & they convince him (John 20:24-29). You can try Jesus on the cross & an impostor appearing before the disciples, but then you not only have to have someone with all those wounds, but he also has to pretend to know the disciples as well as Jesus did after living with them for several years.
You could try to duplicate the wounds. How bad could it be? Well, the ones in the wrists are excruciatingly painful, because the nails go thru the nerve we know as our funny bone. Not to mention you have to flog yourself vigorously which is never a high point in my day. Next spear yourself in the side. That could be a bit tricky. You might kill yourself outright before you ever get to the party with the disciples. Oh, one more key detail about a twin or impostor, there would still be a body in that empty tomb.
My next post will deal with 2 questions that never occurred to me, but I wanted to know the answers once I came across them. How do we know the disciples weren’t suffering from mass hallucination or maybe mass hypnosis? Read Post #8.
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